Michal Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski

Michał Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski (5 January 1893-22 May 1964) was a Lieutenant-General in the Polish Army and the commander of the Home Army from 1939 to 1942, preceding Stefan Rowecki.

Biography
Michał Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski was born on 5 January 1893 in Lemberg, Austria-Hungary (present-day Lviv, Uraine). He served in the Polish Legion from 1914 to 1917 during World War I, and he became an officer in the Polish Army after Poland gained independence in 1918. Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski fought against Ukraine for his hometown (renamed from the German "Lemberg" to the Polish "Lwow"), and he also fought against the Bolsheviks in Lithuania. In 1939, he took command of an operational group of the Pomorze Army, and he fought in the Battle of the Bzura before becoming the second-in-command to Juliusz Rommel and the Warsaw Army during the fall of Warsaw. After Nazi Germany occupied Poland in October, Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski founded the Home Army (then known as the "Polish Victory Service"), and he fought against both the Germans and the Soviets. He was imprisoned by the Soviet NKVD in April 1940, and he was allowed to join the "Anders Army" in August 1941 after Germany invaded the USSR. From March 1943 to 1944, he led the Polish forces in the east, and he went into exile in England and Morocco after the rise of the Polish People's Republic following the end of World War II. Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski died in Casablanca in 1964.